Powerful article in Haaretz 29/10/10 by Carlo Strenger which pretty well sums it all up. Obviously better to look it up but for those who can't be bothered a few brief exerts

" At this point the western world is looking at Israel with a complete lack of understanding.Is it just a banana Republic, something like a failed state ? Or is it just behaving like a spoiled child as Tom Friedman lately argued ?Or is it an ethnocracy that, unsuccessfully, tries to hide ethnic cleansing and colonial ambitions behind protestations that it is under existenial threat ?

Israel , in turn feels misunderstood.........why doesnt the world understand us ?.........The answer is quite simple. It is the great achievement of the Israeli right to have made Israels fears utterly unbeleivable to the world.

Israels right is about to score a further victory......Israel may soon cease to be a democracy and finally be a jewish state without excuses.

Democracy after all is a Helenistic inventionand very un jewish.So why not just drop the fiction of " Jewish and Democratic? "